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Chapter Eleven

Ethan’s eyes seared through her. He looked the same as he had the night before, wind-worn and ready for a fight. It was there in the way he stood, in the alert sharpness of him. She had half convinced herself she had conjured him up. He was entirely too primal for a place like Lyonesse. Certainly for the garden of a tearoom.

Something inside her calmed even as her heart picked up its pace. He was a very confusing man.

Charles did not look confused. He looked suspicious and nervous. Mrs. Aster set her cup down with a snap. “Who is this?”

“A friend,” Ethan replied before Briar could answer. What would she have said? Iron Crow? The notorious Dragon? Too handsome for his own good? For her own good? She would never have considered something as mild as friend.

After all, did a friend tie you to the mast of his ship?

Never mind that now, Briar Foxglove, she told herself sternly when her imagination presented her with several improper suggestions as to how and why a friend might tie one down. She had not realized she had such a good imagination, truth be told. But it had not stopped providing her with tantalizing images since Ethan had offered to search her for the moon charm.

Her cheeks flushed. Her stays were too tight. Sweaty. Was she sweating?

“Miss Foxglove is busy,” Mrs. Aster said. “I require cream for my tea.”

No one added cream to rose-chamomile tea. It bordered on criminal.

“I have cream right here,” Sorcha announced cheerfully, sailing out of the cottage holding the hedgehog-shaped creamer aloft like a war banner. She plunked it down with the same care and courtesy as one might give to some muddy, trampled bloody war banner.

Then she stepped back and smiled at Ethan, who was too tall and too rugged and too sure of himself for the garden. The wisteria plant did not seem to think so. It was curling embarrassingly close to him. If he noticed, Briar would be mortified. It suddenly smelled like a hundred different flowers. The peonies were embarrassing themselves, drooping lazily as they grew too fat and ruffled for their stems in his shadow.

“You don’t look the sort to drink tea,” Sorcha told Ethan. “Rum, definitely. Gin, maybe. Brine? Mermaid tears?”

Ethan only looked amused. Sorcha usually provoked amusement or irritation and not much in between. “I drink tea.”

“Oh good, Briar will make you some. She makes the best.”

“Briar is taking tea with Charles,” Mrs. Aster snapped.

“She is not,” Sorcha retorted.

“They are affianced.”

Sorcha only snorted. Elderberry cawed mockingly. She smiled pointedly at Briar. “Go on and make the tea, and I’ll make sure the Asters have everything they need.” It was most definitely a threat and could not be interpreted otherwise.

Briar returned to the back door, Ethan stalking silently behind her, the grass pressing against his boots. “You’re not marrying that bloody tosspot.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Of course not.” But she said it with more confidence than she actually felt. Please the Moon Mother, let it not be the only option that saved her cottage and her sister.

“He’s not good enough for you.”

Something warm bloomed inside her chest. Her swan threatened to lift its feathers in a preen. Don’t you dare. “You don’t know him,” Briar pointed out. “You don’t know me.”

“I know enough.”

“What are you doing here?” Briar asked, because she did not know what to say to that. Or why that heated awareness of him burned even brighter than it had last night. Or why she felt the urge to pat her hair to make sure it had not slipped from its pins. She was worried about her sister and the shields and the moon charm. Not about the state of her hair. That would be absurd.

“What did the Keepers have to say for themselves last night?” he asked in that hard, but somehow lazy way of his, as though nothing could ruffle him. As though shields and the threat of a Keeper’s iron collar were just idle threats, flies to be swatted away.

She led him into the kitchen, where he leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed, watching her fill the kettle. “How did you know they were here?” she asked.

“Of course they were here. Meddling is what they do best.”

“But when you stomp through my house, it’s not meddling, I suppose?” she said archly.

He nearly smiled. Not quite, but it was close. “I go where I like.”